The San Jose Mercury News reported on March 11, that Lynn Scarlett, formerly of conservative environmental research group, the Reason Foundation has been appointed Acting Secretary for the US Deptartment of the Interior. The department overseas US land, conservation and resource management policy, including the US EPA. Scarlett wrote a number of reports critical of recycling in the 1990s, and was considered a prime source for the mid 1990's diatribe, "Recycling is Garbage" by NYTimes' John Tierney.

Until Bush appoints a successor, Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett will take the helm of the Interior Department. A Santa Barbara resident, Scarlett is former president of the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles think tank with libertarian leanings. She has worked to promote free-market solutions to environmental problems.

In a 1997 editorial in Reason Magazine, Scarlett wrote, "Environmentalism is a coherent ideology that rivals Marxism in its challenge to the classic liberal view of government as protector of individual rights.''